Below is the complete list of Alexander McCall Smith books in order. For each series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of 44 Scotland Street Books
Publication Order of Akimbo Books
with LeUyen Pham
Publication Order of The Big-Top Mysteries Books
Publication Order of Corduroy Mansions Books
Publication Order of Detective Varg Books
Publication Order of Detective Varg Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Harriet Bean Books
Publication Order of Isabel Dalhousie Books
Publication Order of Isabel Dalhousie Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Max & Maddy Books
Publication Order of Myths Books
Publication Order of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Books
Publication Order of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Collections Books
Publication Order of Paul Stuart Books
Publication Order of The Perfect Passion Company Books
Publication Order of Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Cases Books
Publication Order of Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld Books
Publication Order of The School Ship Tobermory Books
Publication Order of Young Corgi Books
Publication Order of Children’s Books
- The Girl Who Changed the Weather (1991)
The Girl Who Changed the Weather was first published in 1991; within the Children’s series, it is listed as book #5. 
Publication Order of Standalone Books
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas Books
Publication Order of Short Story Collections Books
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Publication Order of Austen Project Books
Publication Order of Mysterious Profiles Books
Publication Order of Writers on Writers Books
About Alexander McCall Smith
Sir Alexander McCall Smith is a Scottish-Zimbabwean novelist, legal scholar, and children’s writer whose fiction is known for humane observation, dry comedy, and an enduring interest in the moral choices hidden within ordinary life. Although he has written mysteries, serial novels, standalones, poetry, short stories, academic works, and books for younger readers, he is most widely associated with The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the Botswana-set series that introduced Precious Ramotswe and transformed him into an internationally recognized author.
Born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in 1948, McCall Smith moved to Scotland to study law at the University of Edinburgh. He completed an LLB in 1971 and a PhD in 1979, later teaching law in Britain and Botswana. His work in Africa included helping establish the law school at the University of Botswana, and he developed particular expertise in medical law, criminal law, bioethics, and questions of legal and moral responsibility. He became Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh and served on national and international bodies concerned with ethical issues in medicine.
That academic background remained important after fiction became his principal occupation. McCall Smith co-authored a major textbook on law and medical ethics and wrote on subjects including Botswana’s criminal law. His novels rarely resemble legal thrillers, yet they frequently examine fairness, duty, forgiveness, conscience, and the obligations people owe one another. Rather than resolving those questions through dramatic speeches, he places them inside friendships, marriages, workplaces, neighborhoods, and apparently minor disputes whose emotional consequences prove substantial.
His first published book, the children’s story The White Hippo, appeared in 1980, and he produced numerous works before achieving his major commercial breakthrough. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was published in 1998 and established a series centered on Mma Precious Ramotswe, the proprietor of a small detective agency in Gaborone. The investigations are important, but the books derive much of their character from friendship, family, changing social customs, practical kindness, and Mma Ramotswe’s belief in patient judgment. McCall Smith’s years in southern Africa gave the setting familiarity and affection, while his restraint helped the series avoid becoming a conventional sequence of increasingly violent crimes.
Edinburgh supplies the setting for several other major branches of his bibliography. The Isabel Dalhousie novels follow a philosopher and journal editor whose curiosity draws her into moral puzzles and personal mysteries. The 44 Scotland Street books began as a newspaper serial in The Scotsman and developed into a large ensemble portrait of Edinburgh residents whose lives intersect through family, property, work, art, and neighborhood gossip. The Professor Dr. von Igelfeld books use academic rivalry and social misunderstanding for comic effect, while Corduroy Mansions applies a similar ensemble structure to London.
McCall Smith’s style is gentle without being naïve. His characters can be vain, jealous, dishonest, or absurd, but he generally approaches their weaknesses with curiosity rather than cruelty. Conversation, reflection, and small acts of decency carry more weight than elaborate plotting, making his series especially dependent on recurring relationships and accumulated familiarity. The bibliography is best understood by following each fictional community separately rather than treating every novel as part of one shared universe.
He has also written standalone novels, children’s series, poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction, contributing to more than one hundred books. His honors include a CBE for services to literature, Botswana’s Presidential Order of Merit, and a knighthood announced in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to literature, academia, and charity. Across an unusually varied career, McCall Smith has remained most interested in how people construct meaningful lives through companionship, responsibility, humor, and the everyday decision to treat others with dignity.